Philadelphia, PA — Aloysius Butler & Clark, a full-service marketing communications firm, wants to identify the next great business idea originating from a Philadelphia-based company. The agency’s “Lightning in a Bottle” competition seeks entries from companies located within the city limits that have a game-changing product or service ready to go to market.

Entries will be accepted from April 14 to May 19 online at www.LightningInABottleAward.com. A blue-ribbon panel of judges representing business, academia, and government will evaluate the submissions. In addition, the public can vote for their favorite entrants via the website.Read full post...

HubSpot: Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5X more traffic than companies that don’t blog at all.

The short answer is yes. According to a recent article in Social Media Today:

• 81% of U.S. consumers trust advice and information from blogs.
• Small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads.
• 61% of U.S. consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post.

So how do you write a good one?Read full post...

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Aloysius Butler & Clark, a full-service marketing communications agency, came home with gold and silver from the 2014 ADDY Awards. The agency won gold in the “Campaign — Single Medium Campaign” category for its Choose Health Delaware videos. The silver came courtesy of AB&C’s Agency Match Game in the “Creative Services and Industry Suppliers — Digital” category.Read full post...

Has it been a while since you’ve gotten any killer ideas from your agency? Is the creative they give you an echo of the suggestions you gave them? Do you feel like they’re not giving you their best?

You can do something about it.

Give your agency a report card.

Everyone that works for someone wants to know how he or she is doing. Agency folks are no exception. Get together with them regularly to talk about how things are going. They’ll get a better understanding of your wants and needs, and that will pay off handsomely.Read full post...

Baby naming is a competitive endeavor.

My wife and I are expecting our third child in about a month and the pressure is on to pick a name for “baby girl.” When we tell people we don’t have a name yet, some of them think we’re just trying to keep it a secret so no one else picks the name. If you’ve looked for inspiration or ideas for baby names recently, you’ve no doubt realized that a full-blown industry has grown up around the subject. There are baby name consultants, dozens of websites and the official records kept by the Social Security office.

The top three boy names in the United States are:Read full post...

Last year, Delaware recorded less than 100 traffic deaths for the first time since 1963. AB&C and Delaware’s Office of Highway Safety have been working on numerous initiatives — from curbing aggressive driving to pedestrian safety — to drive that number down even further. Recent campaigns include Click It Or Ticket, which has helped increase the rate of seat belt use to an all-time high of 92% —one of the highest percentages of usage in the nation. Preliminary reports also show that 36% of the 99 traffic deaths in 2013 were alcohol-related. This percentage decreased dramatically from 2012 when 60 (or 52%) of the 116 motorist fatalities were alcohol-related.Read full post...

AB&C welcomes financial industry veteran Ed Ianni to our team. He brings more than three decades of experience in financial services, banking, wealth management, business development, marketing communications, risk management, law and insurance. Ed also serves as an advisor in both the public and private sectors, successfully helping clients grow their businesses, capital and economies. He holds his juris doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law, bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oxford University, and a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.Read full post...

They’re only available (at $1,500-plus a pop) to select Explorers — Google’s own handpicked beta testers.

Depends on whom you ask. Google Glass will either be the biggest game changer in wearable technology, or a creepy Big Brother bust that sends people running for the exits. For those who’ve been living under a rock, Google Glass is essentially a smartphone worn as glasses.

It’s got 13 functions including hands-free camera/video/phone, Internet links, voice-activated text and commands (“OK, Glass, take picture.”), all in a heads-up display that keeps your eyes on the road or whatever/whoever is in front of you. You can even have prescription lenses. But you can’t have a pair yet. They’re only available (at $1,500-plus a pop) to select Explorers — Google’s own handpicked beta testers — who will gladly let you bid for theirs on Amazon or eBay.Read full post...

Bowl of Irish stew with soda bread

When it comes to St. Patrick’s Day, I’m somewhat out of the loop (mostly by heritage). But I was curious: Why do so many people love to participate in this celebration?

Ask anyone, “What’s the first thing that comes to your mind about St. Patrick’s Day?” and you get a lot of different answers. Some mention religious aspects; some refer to the mythical leprechauns; others wax poetic about corned beef, Irish Potato candies and green beer. But who was St. Patrick?Read full post...

Please take “hit” out of your vocabulary when you’re asking about campaign performance. We never measure by hits, but instead a variety of other metrics.

In the world of analytics, there’s this one, single dirty word that never fails to grate on an analyst’s nerves: “hit.”

As in:

“How many hits did we get?”

“Did we get any hits on our landing page?”

“Can you check the hits for me on that campaign?”

I’ll let you in on a secret: There’s no such thing as a hit. There are clicks, visits, visitors and pageviews, and each of those are different measurements.

Clicks indicate how many people have clicked on an ad. A user can click on an ad multiple times, but only be counted as one visitor. Similarly, a user can click on an ad just once and come back to the website in multiple visits. Usually, we only measure clicks when we’re analyzing ad performance. The number of clicks per the number of impressions equals the click-through rate (CTR).Read full post...

You’ve probably heard about “responsive web design” by now. Hopefully you’ve been able to incorporate this into any new web projects you’re working on, and you’ve already converted — or plan to convert — your existing high-value or high-traffic websites.

While responsive web design has been universally accepted and adopted, it does have a dark side: responsive images. I’ll explain what this problem is, how it’s being solved and why it’s yet another reason to let experts help you with these issues so you can stay focused on your content and ultimately your core business.

To understand the problem, we need to get a little technical. Here are some handy terms to know (refer to the diagram for some visual assistance):Read full post...

In 2012 alone, 3,328 people were killed in distracted driving crashes.

Every day on my way to work I witness an amazing number of people who put their lives and the lives of others in jeopardy. People eating, reading the newspaper, smoking, putting on makeup, talking on their cell phones and — worst of all — texting. For what?

They swerve, drive too slow, run off the road, cut you off and stop abruptly. They piss off everyone around them. And most of the time they’re oblivious to the potential danger they’re causing. For what?

I’ve tried every way I know to deal with this, including ignoring them. But it’s impossible. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that using their cell phone while driving is illegal. It’s a dangerous epidemic on America’s roadways. And the statistics don’t lie: In 2012 alone, 3,328 people were killed in distracted driving crashes. For what?Read full post...

No longer just for boys and girls

On February 13, social media giant Facebook took a courageous step forward by improving its gender identity feature. Previously it only offered “male” or “female” as a user’s choices. It now lists over 50 possibilities, along with pronouns the user can choose to let friends know how they would like to be referred to publicly. Facebook’s message is forward thinking and clear—it wants its users to know that it recognizes the large spectrum of gender identity. It also wants users to feel comfortable and included, no matter where they identify on that spectrum.

There were many reactions to this change, from positive to ambivalent to negative; but the LGBTQ community certainly has reason to celebrate. Surely there will be people for whom this change means nothing—but for the users this does impact, it could mean everything.Read full post...

WILMINGTON, DE — Aloysius Butler & Clark, a full-service marketing communications agency, and four of its clients won a combined seven awards at the 35^th annual Telly Awards. With silver as the highest award given, the agency took home seven total awards: one silver and one bronze with Delaware Office of Highway Safety; one silver and one bronze with Delaware Division of Public Health; one silver for its Choose Health Delaware campaign; and two bronzes with MedStar Health — the largest healthcare provider in the Maryland/D.C. region.Read full post...

Though we all know about color — the ones we like and the ones we don’t like — color is often misunderstood. In certain combinations, colors can scream or whisper. This is because colors are influenced by adjacent colors. In our industry, designers understand how important color choices are. To the untrained eye, color choice — when not dictated by corporate graphic standards — may appear random. Far from it. We put a lot of thought into our decisions. Certain color combinations create harmony. Contrasting colors ensure the legibility of the message we’re trying to communicate. Colors are all relative — to each other. The difference between a message that’s screaming for attention and one that should be softer in tone can be achieved by which colors are used in the design.Read full post...